urity Income (SSI) program. Congress established the Supplemental Security Income program in 1972, with payments beginning in January 1974. It replaced the former Federal-State programs of Old-Age Assistance (OAA), Aid to the Blind (AB), and Aid to the Permanently and Totally Disabled (APTD)(Myles, and Pierson 9). An individual may have qualified for payments on the basis of age, blindness, or disability. Any person aged 65 or older was also eligible. President Richard Nixon enacted the Supplemental Security Income program with the signing of the Supplemental Social Insurance Act. The benefits under this program were originally targeted to the elderly who did not qualify for social security and the blind and disabled whose income and assets fell below the specified thresholds. A third major welfare assistance program is the Medicaid program. The Medicaid program is a health care support program targeted toward the poor. Medicaid was originally supposed to provide the same health care to the poor as privately insured Americans received with their health care programs. (Myles, and Pierson 9) The Medicaid program was originally set up so all families who qualified for AFDC or SSI were automatically entitled to Medicaid benefits. Today, Medicaid is the major mechanism for financing health and long-term care for the poor in the United States. As such, the Medicaid program covers the medical expenses for over 35 million Americans at a cost of more than $152 billion a year (Myles, and Pierson 12). Explanations for Welfare: Although the United States is a country with an extensive amount of economic resources, problems still transpire. One such problem occurs with not the amount of resources but actually how those resources are distributed among its citizens. Because of this, some citizens live in squalor or complete poverty while others live in luxury. This poverty dilemma in the United States is usually referred to as an income ...
